jaimes

Isabella Rossellini is ballsy. She is an actor, model, writer and mother, whose career choices are character driven and reflect a wide range of female personalities, which is not easy for women to accomplish in Hollywood. Early on, we knew her as gorgeous and deranged in Blue Velvet and in recent years, she proved to be light and hilarious in guest appearances on Friends and 30 Rock.

Isabella’s latest project called Green Porno is a quirky example of thinking outside of the Hollywood typecasting box. It’s a series of short videos where she portrays the mating rituals of animals. She writes, produces and acts in these videos that are featured on the Sundance Channel. Rather than play grandmotherly roles in big budget films, Isabella has dedicated her efforts to these educational shorts, which help raise awareness for the environment and show appreciation for the creatures that walk, feast, and mate on this earth.

As I said, she’s ballsy. It takes guts to dress up as a squid and talk about ink squirting from your anus. Then again, she is a mother, and we can be pretty stinkin’ brave. Because once you’ve shit on yourself in childbirth with a camcorder or camera capturing the blessed event, embarrassment is no longer part of your lexicon.

“I can say i love you with my whole 3 hearts.”

actor. mother of natasha and courtney.

“You get tough in this business, until you get big enough to hire people to get tough for you. Then you can sit back and be a lady.”

This holiday season has got me thinking about the naughty and nice paradigm our culture is so hellbent on impressing upon us. It works great with my kids this time of year. When they start acting up, I pull the old Santa is watching routine. My son was actually in tears the other day when his daddy put in a call to Santa to report on his naughty behavior. But, what about us, the moms laying the naughty and nice tracks for our wee ones to follow? I’m pretty nice, but I’ve still got a little naughty left in me, and I like to bring her out to play every once in a while.
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actor. comedian. mother of julian.

“I’ve learned you can make a mistake and the whole world doesn’t end. I had to learn to allow myself to make a mistake without becoming defensive and unforgiving.”

actor. comedian. model. film and television executive. mother of lucie and desiderido.

“I’m not funny. What I am is brave.”

I just took an online stress test and scored a 431. Anything over 300 means a high probability of stress-related illness. My probability was 80 percent. Is bitchiness considered a stress-related illness? Cause my forecast is showing a slight chance of bitching with a very good chance of sarcasm. So, this test doesn’t reveal how stressed a person is, but rather quantifies the level of stress related to life events, such as marriage, divorce, job change, relocation, death in the family, etc. Let’s see in the past year, my husband’s company in Virginia closed, and we moved to a new state, where I remain not gainfully employed, but stylishly unemployed. With only one income and two children, it’s become increasingly difficult to keep up financially, especially with Christmas on the horizon. We’ve had four emergency room visits since moving here, including my daughter breaking and re-breaking her arm. At this point, we may be stuffing our stockings with unpaid medical bills. Last month my grandfather passed away. And, this month, my landlord pulled a very unnecessary power play, revealing herself to be the devil disguised as a chiropractor. I’d say I have reason to be stressed.
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